Elevator Pitch

The LifeHacker web site often has a serial called the Elevator Pitch. Here is our attempt at answering the LifeHacker questions for ourselves.

In 128 words or less, explain your business idea.

In many organizations, Split System Air Conditioners are unmanaged, and unmanageable. Using Cloud Computing technologies, along with smart phones and WiFi networks, we intend to give organizations the tools to manage their Air Conditioner usage. This includes centralized controls, usage limits and maintenance planning. There will even be lock outs when the weather outside means that opening a window will be just as effective. Our concept is that organizations will be most likely to buy our service if they are saving somewhat more than it costs. For this reason, we designed the system with a payback period of 1-2 years.

What strategies are you using to grow and finance your idea?

The initial expenses for Redshift Wireless were paid by a company owned by me. As the idea became a reality, I decided to form a new private company to develop the idea, and brought a relative to provide a small amount of seed capital in return for equity. When the company was set up, only 85% of the shares were allocated, with other shares set aside for other potential investors and for sweat equity without needing to dilute the existing shareholding.

I am also getting some income from a company that I own to pay my day to day bills. It is hoped that the initial investment will allow us to build enough demo hardware to sell, funding our first production run. The economics of the product are that we intend to invest most of the profits from the business back into the business, allowing us to grow. With tight credit management, we hope to be able to afford to expand in a rapid but controlled manner.

One of the decisions we made early on was that we did not want to be customer facing. We always intended to operate through resellers. These resellers would be paid well for the work they do, but in return they deal with many of the hassles, including paying us on time.

What’s the biggest challenge facing your business?

Software. I once bought a book on managing programmers, and it was called ‘Herding Cats’. The programmers I have on this project are fairly good, but even so, managing programmers dealing with complex problems is not a simple task. The major issue facing the company right now is getting the firmware written for our main product. That is being worked on as we speak.

The other major challenge is that most of the back end systems are written in Ruby On Rails, which is a technology that I really am not up to speed with, and do not understand totally. I know enough to recognize when things are not as they should be, but sometimes it is difficult explaining to programmers what is wrong with the solution and how they should fix it. In some other languages, I could fix it myself. Having said that, Ruby On Rails is the right technology for this project.

How do you differentiate your product from your competitors.

Thankfully at the moment we really don’t have any competitors. We are operating in a space without them. It is our aim to get the product to market, and get entrenched before the competition realizes we are there. Once we are entrenched, it is much harder to competition to enter the market. Having said that, we are monitoring one company hoping that they will not decide to compete with us.

What one phone, tablet or PC application could you not live without?

That would have to be Microsoft Outlook. An ex-boss of mine told me back in 1997 or so that I would love it. And I have been using it basically every day since, and love it. I now use Outlook 2011 on the Mac, but I would not use anything else. Well, apart from the standard Mail app on the iPad, but Outlook on the Mac wins!

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever received?

“Manage Cashflow Daily”. When I was taking a redundancy from the public sector 10 years back, I went to a small business seminar, and this piece of advice was suggested, and it stuck with me. This does not mean that you should log into your Internet Banking every day, but you should have an idea of the financial state of your business at all times. You should also be able to recognize if something is wrong, and fix it. I had one client years back who was a doctor, and the receptionist was not submitting Medicare forms. The Doctor lost about three months income by not monitoring cash flow. For them, monitoring to the closest $10,000 would have helped!

What one phone, tablet or PC application could you not live without?